1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a fermented food or drink product, prepared by fermenting a vegetative raw material used as a main raw material, and a method for producing the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
Lactic acid bacteria have been used for producing various fermented food or drink products, and some of the bacteria per se have excellent physiological activities, such as intestinal regulatory activity and inhibitory activity against pathogenic bacteria. Such useful lactic acid bacteria is utilized for the production of the food or drink'product, and furthermore excellent fermented food or drink products designed to be food for a person's health can be produced by maintaining living lactic acid bacteria in the fermented food or drink products.
On the other hand, it is known that strains of lactic acid bacteria that belong to Lactobacillus brevis (hereinafter sometimes abbreviated as Lactobacillus brevis) are especially strongly stress tolerant and have excellent physiological activities over an extremely wide range, among lactic acid bacteria. Reports have been made so far on their use in, for example, antiallergic agents, interferon production enhancers, antigastritis agents and antiulcer agents, hepatitis therapeutic/preventive agents, tumor growth inhibitors, antitumor activators, and γ-aminobutyric acid production.
In this way, since Lactobacillus brevis is a very useful lactic acid bacteria which can readily reach the intestine and survive for a long time if taken in a living state, fermented food or drink products which include Lactobacillus brevis in a living state are desired to be developed as food or drink products designed for health. Various methods for producing such fermented food or drink products have been proposed. For example, there are disclosed a method for producing fermented food or drink products by utilizing a fermentation medium prepared using milk as a sole raw material, the fermentation medium being generally used to ferment lactic acid, and a method for producing food or drink products in which glutamic acid or a glutamic acid-containing material is added to vegetative raw materials, such as fruits, vegetables, fruit juices or vegetable juices, soybean milk, or wort, to ferment thereof (see Patent Document 1).    Patent Document 1: Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 2004-215529